Title: Right Through The Very Heart Of It -- New York, New York
Pairing: Puck/Rachel
Rating: R for naughty words
Disclaimer: I don't own Glee. Or Rachel. Or Puck (unfortunately)
Summary: Rachel & Puck meet in New York City to finish a story they started in Lima, Ohio
Author Notes: Written for the Not-So-Secret-Santa Fic Exchange on the LJ puckrachel community. In response to ayleecambell's prompt.
Shout-out to Babs & Shannon for each reading this 9 million times. I loff you, BBs.
Right Through The Very Heart Of It -- New York, New York
The first thing she needs to get used to is the anonymity.
People don't stop and stare at her in the street. Nobody knows who she is. There are no whispers about her wardrobe, snickers about her fathers or covert looks at her crotch to determine the validity of a rumour that has haunted her for years.
A fresh start.
She hates it.
-------
The first thing he needs to get used to is the smell.
Open sewers, day-old garbage and people, so many people.
He can't help the wide-eyed look on his face as he steps off the bus with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder and his guitar case in hand.
"Not in Kansas anymore, huh?" chuckles an older man walking down the street who's probably seen this scene played out a million times.
"I'm from Ohio," he responds dumbly.
--------
This is exactly where she planned on being at this stage in her life. It's the circumstances that are all wrong.
Her fathers have the cheque to Columbia signed and ready when she tells them she has picked NYU. She is going to be an artist, a performer, somebody.
To them, years of dance recitals and the beauty pageant circuit mean nothing in the face of an Ivy League education. To her, they mean everything.
So she cashes in the bonds her grams left her, barely enough for her first semester, and sets off alone.
-------
The year after graduation he spends working construction during the day and going to community college at night. Finn is at Ohio State. Quinn has a full ride to Miami. Berry is living the dream in New York.
He's just about accepted his lot in life when he runs into Mr. Schue. An awkward hello turns to coffee which turns to dinner at his and Ms. P's place which turns to talks about the future, hopes, dreams, plans... He'd hate his old teacher for re-igniting this spark in him if he wasn't so willing to help him get there.
When he gets his acceptance letter to NYU, his mother cries. Happy tears.
-------
She's been in New York for a year. In between class, work study and any chorus line she can finagle her way into, she has about as many friends here as she did back in Ohio. Which is to say none.
But there's also no quarterback with the heart of gold who pushes and pulls and makes her feel giddy. No bitchy cheerleader that makes her cry and yet unleashes holy hell on anyone else who tries to do the same. No Mohawked bad boy who makes her blush in a million different shades and ways. No snippy frienemy to tear her down only to force her to build herself back up, stronger and better.
She is not surprised that she hasn't made friends. But she does miss her family.
-------
He stands by what he said. School is for suckers.
But his scholarship situation is precarious so he goes to class. He doesn't hate it as much as he feared, but he doesn't love it as much as he hoped, either.
When he sits alone in his too-small dorm room eating cold soup from a can, he tries not to feel like a cliché. Small-town boy tries to make it in the big city. It's pathetic and done to death, and guys like him are a dime a dozen.
But then he reminds himself that he is Noah Puckerman trying to make it in New York and there is only one of those.
-------
It's at the financial-aid office that he first hears her.
His mom has left him a frantic message about paperwork that needs to be sorted out so he suffers through the soul-killing experience of taking a number, waiting, arguing, filling out forms, being sent down the hall, taking another number... when he hears someone having an epic shit-fit and storming out of a room in a flurry of papers and righteous anger. He knows that voice well. He knows that anger even better.
He smiles for the first time since getting to the city.
-------
She had heard from Quinn that Puck had gotten into NYU. Still, she never expected to be having coffee with him in her favourite bistro.
"I think my roommate is planning on killing me," she explains. He is either used to her bizarre exclamations or believes that living with her could lead one to homicidal tendencies because he betrays no surprise at this. "And financial aid is only doing so much. I'd get my own place but I can't afford it alone."
They stare at each other for five full-minutes and she knows he will never be the one to ask so she sighs and says "Puck, do you want to find a place and be roommates?"
"Only if you pay for my coffee," is his answer. She reaches for her pocket instantly but he smirks, grabs her wrist and drags her out into the street to the screams of the snooty waitress.
"I can never go back there again," she harps, breathless, when they get to end of the block, hitting him on the chest. But she's laughing. And he's laughing.
They spend the rest of the day looking at awful apartments.
--------
He's never been hard to please when it comes to a place to stay. A place to crash, a roof over his head and somewhere to stash his beer is all he needs. And yet even he is kind of disgusted with the shit-holes their non-existent budget limits them to. He can't imagine the horror Berry is experiencing as they navigate their way through the slim pickings.
When they finally find a place that doesn't induce instant projectile vomiting, Rachel smiles through the tears and declares that it could be worse.
"Yeah, we could have decided to go study in Kabul or something."
Something in her breaks and she starts to sob. Feeling bad, he does his best comfort her, hugging and stroking her hair to no avail. It's only when Puck accidently puts his elbow through the wall in the hallway that they both laugh until their stomachs hurt.
They consider putting a picture frame over the hole but then decide to leave it as is.
-------
Broadway is a tougher nut to crack than she expected. Chorus lines offer some meagre income but she knows she is better than this.
But Rachel Berry is nothing if not doggedly persistent. She climbs through the ranks to land an understudy position in an off-Broadway production and even though it's not her goal, it's a start.
When Puck declares that this calls for a celebration, she smiles and says "Even though I ain't no Kelly Rowland?" in a spot-on imitation of their old friend.
"Please, Berry," he grunts, cracking open a can of beer. "You'll always be Beyoncé in my heart."
She tells herself that he doesn't mean anything by it.
-------
Their situation requires some creativity when it comes to bringing other people home.
He has his trysts elsewhere when he can, but sometimes their place is just more convenient. He comes to learn that Rachel Berry is the best thing to have around the morning after. This has always been the part he is weakest at, the fumbled excuses and lame "I'll call you"s. But after the very first girl he brings home stumbles across their kitchen/livingroom/everythingroom and Rachel accosts her with pamphlets and directions to the nearest free clinic to get herself checked out, he never has to worry about anyone outlasting their welcome again.
When Rachel invites a boy from her class over to work on a project, Puck walks in on them giggling over Chinese take-out. He decides to spend the night anywhere but there. The next morning he waits across the street for the guy to leave before coming in with coffee.
He wonders how long it'll take the douchetard to find what he's keyed on the side of his car.
-------
Puck has no problem putting her in charge of paying the bills. Rachel prides herself on being responsible and punctual.
So when the heating bill goes unpaid just as the weather dips below ball-numbing, he knows she hasn't forgotten; the money's just not there.
When the warnings stop coming and the heating gets turned off, they go to the Met and spend the day not freezing to death. She is offended when he is unimpressed with the Pollock exhibit. He annoys her when the Warhols make him hungry.
He complains of boredom. She calls him an uncultured ass. They both get shushed by the guards.
It's somewhere among displays of Pre-Columbian Peruvian art that he takes advantage of the fact that they are alone to kiss her. He tries not to let on that he's been thinking about it for weeks.
When they get back to the apartment, the heat is still off but they keep warm the old-fashioned way. It should be awkward but it's actually perfect. Until they wake up the next morning and he no longer has her to help him deal with whoever is in his bed because it's her so he falls back on the old standard and mutters "I'll call you," as he pulls his jeans on and heads out.
Within an hour he's on the first bus back to Cleveland.
-------
Against all odds, the original New Directions team is all back in Lima for the holidays and standing in Mr. Schuester and Ms. Pillsbury (soon to be Pillsbury-Schuester)'s cramped living room. Everyone is silent for a minute before reverting back to old times. It's a cacophony of voices as they talk over each other, sing and dance, catch up and boast and complain.
Someone in the din asks "How's the Big Apple?" and both of their heads snap up. Mr. S laughs. "It completely slipped my mind. You're both at the same school! Do you ever see each other?"
They're saved from answering when Finn turns to Rachel and says, shyly, "I've always wanted to see New York. Maybe I can come visit you in the spring."
-------
They take the bus back to New York together. They don't mention what happened before leaving home or what will happen when they get back. When they get on the New Jersey turnpike they sing Simon & Garfunkel's "America" softly to each other and laugh when someone tosses a quarter in Puck's cup of stale coffee.
--------
He wakes up to Rachel Berry sitting on his waist, staring down at him intently. He's had nightmares like this. He's had wet dreams like this, too. But she apparently has no plans to smother him in his sleep or fuck him into unconsciousness.
"I'm in," she says breathlessly, her whole body vibrating in excitement.
"What," he asks, rubbing his eyes. The whole story comes pouring out of her: the lead, a slip during rehearsal, a broken femur, months to recover, I'm it now, I'm the star, I'M THE STAR, NOAH!
They celebrate with a bottle of cheap wine and a sunrise over the Manhattan skyline. He debates whether or not to ask her if the accident was, you know, an accident. She probably wouldn't get the joke.
-------
For the record, Rachel never laid her hands on her. Although she concedes that her nightly fervent prayers about this exact thing happening might have had something to do with it. She bakes a tray of GET WELL sugar cookies to tip the scales of karma back in her favour.
Then promptly goes on to claim her rightful place in the top billing.
-------
That's when things start taking off for her. Her extra-credits and summer classes make her eligible for early graduation. One role leads to another and more money than she's ever called her own starts coming in until one day he finds her pouring through the classifieds. His stomach clenches.
But then she asks him "How would you feel about living in the East Village?" and he wipes the smudge of black newspaper ink that's found its way to her cheek and smiles.
They find a place. Small but tidy, right in the thick of her world and when she signs her name on the lease she pens a small star next to it.
He used to have dreams about having a sugar mama. But he's not a kid anymore. And he certainly won't let someone younger than him and half his size take care of him. So he hands in his official deferment to the university and finds a full-time job on a construction crew so he can pull his own weight.
It leads to their first ever real fight. She is only pacified when he tells her the break from school is temporary. It's not.
-------
Moving day is not without its headaches.
The movers don't follow directions very well. She tells them so. When she leaves the room, she can hear Puck apologize to them about "the ballbuster" and offer them some beer on their break. The beer, it turns out, doesn't help matters at all.
Just when she is ready to throw herself down in the living room (they have a living room) at the end of the day and sleep forever, Puck's shocked voice echoes from the bathroom. She sits up in a panic. She knew it was too good to be true and there is something wrong with this place and they will have to give it up or grin and bear it and she is tired of bearing it. When she flings the door open, she finds Puck standing in the tub, his t-shirt and jeans plastered to his body, grinning under the stream of warm water.
They have warm water.
He holds his hand out to her and she gets in, clothes and all. They stand under the water, laughing like idiots.
When he starts singing the Movin' On Up song from the Jeffersons, she laughs and joins him. When he eventually slips and cracks his head open against the tub, she bandages it up the best she can and stays up with him through his concussion.
Moving day is not without its memories.
-------
When she starts dropping hints about how much his mother must be missing him in Lima, and wouldn't it be nice if he paid her a visit, he packs his bag silently.
For a talented actress, she is an awful liar.
He knows this means Finn is coming to visit her.
Their decision to keep their living arrangement to themselves is a mutual one. So he has no right to be upset when she keeps up the charade for her first love.
Except... he's grown attached to their new couch. It's comfortable and it's where he goes when he has a bad day and in a city that he still doesn't fully understand, that couch feels like home. If Hudson's bare ass gets anywhere near his couch, Puck will have to torch the thing.
He thinks about the couch the whole ride to Ohio. And then the whole ride back to New York.
-------
Finn's visit is fun.
Although she has lived here for almost two years, Finn talks her into going to all the tourist traps that native New Yorkers shun. They visit the Statue of Liberty. They take a carriage ride in Central Park. They take silly pictures at the wax museum.
Puck would have an aneurysm if she even suggested doing any of this.
The visit is fun, but chaste. He kisses her sweetly on the lips in the middle of Times Square. They spend his last night sharing a blanket and drinking hot cocoa in the living room. It's perfectly nice.
But then she spots a pair of Puck's briefs, thrown haphazardly on an armchair, and she freezes. Finn nudges her and gives her a small smile. "I saw them when I got here. Whoever he is, he's a lucky guy, Rach." He kisses her on the temple. "But I'm definitely going to ask to Puck to keep an eye out for you when he gets back from Lima."
-------
Working on a serious crew, Puck learns something for himself that he's always been told by others. He's really good with his hands.
The job isn't exactly rocket science, but there is something to be said for helping make something out of nothing. And he is good at it.
The money is good. There is room for promotion. The benefits are more than worth it.
And after a hard day's work he goes home to a cold beer, conversations he can barely follow about hectic rehearsals and complaints about the mess he's left and how much he smells, which always end with him chasing her across their apartment (and god, he remembers the days when he couldn't take two steps in their old place without going through a wall) and tackling her into the random piles of clothes he leaves laying around.
Sometimes, he feels like an idiot for coming all this way just to live a life he could've lived in Lima, Ohio, only with way lower state taxes and less smog in the air.
Then after a few beers (and he even convinces her to drink one too, even though she scrunches her face every time she takes a sip) she drags him to the roof and makes him look at the skyline with her. And when she starts rambling about whatever and sort of leans against him, he thinks maybe it's not just New York that's made him so happy.
-------
She brings him to the cast party at the end of her show's run and introduces him as her roommate.
The drinks flow all night. It's not long before everyone's tipsy. It's not much longer before they're all drunk.
"So, just roommates?" her cast-mates all tease. She blushes and nods. They are all fascinated by the gruff, handsome man she claims to live with platonically. Her male lead, among others, eyes Puck up and down without shame, and Puck preens under their scrutiny, although whether is it due to the alcohol or his unflagging egoism, she can't begin to guess. But she assumes both.
"No, not just roommates," she hears him say when the question is turned on him. She stops breathing.
Although he is addressing his new fan club, he turns to her, his eyes bright and wide, face flushed, "Berry here broke my heart in high school," he says with a self-deprecating grin.
Before she can get her thoughts organized and her heart to stop pounding in her chest, her understudy, a short, buxom little redhead, latches onto Puck's side. "Aw, that's so sad," she whimpers. She doesn't let go for the rest of the night.
When Rachel finally crawls into a cab much later, she tries to remember when she lost sight of Puck. And the understudy.
The next morning, head pounding and hiding behind her Jackie O shades, she boards a bus. But it's a one-way ticket.
-------
Rachel Berry is not a quitter. But she knows when to fight her battles head-on and when to go back to base-camp to strategize.
She has a plan. She always does. She is going to get over Noah Puckerman.
She is very gung-ho about the plan for about a day before she realizes she doesn't want to get over Puck. She very much likes being under him.
Luckily, she always has a back-up plan, too.
The first thing she does is tell her fathers that she's been living with Puck in New York for the better part of a year. To say they are shocked is an understatement.
Although it doesn't quite compare to Finn's reaction. "I thought those underpants looked familiar," he murmurs over the phone. Rachel shakes her head, "Finn, do you understand what I am saying? I'm in love with Puck. Are you okay with this?"
"Rachel, my two best friends are in love with each other" (she considers correcting him, as she has hardly reached that part of her plan, but she lets him continue) "of course I'm okay with this. Go get 'em, Tiger."
She spends a week in Ohio. Planning. Plotting. She is ready. She is going to go back home (why has it taken her this long to figure it out when he has been her home for months?) and put her plan into action.
But as she packs her bags, there is a knock on her fathers' door. When she answers, an irate Puck takes up most of the doorway.
"What the fuck, Berry?"
-------
He finds a note the morning after the cast party on the kitchen counter. She obviously wrote it drunk, his name is misspelled. And it's signed, Love, R.
He carries the note around in his pocket for the next two days. When he doesn't hear from her by the third, he calls Finn. Who obviously knows something because he spends the first half of the conversation going "Rachel who? Oh, Rachel-Rachel. Yeah, what about her?" and then the second half doing a horrible job of acting surprised to learn that they've been living together.
"Out with it, Hudson," he growls.
"Uh, no. Sorry, gotta go. The bus! The bus is here. BYE!" and Puck swears he hears a very faint, very rushed "Go get 'em, Tiger!" before the line goes dead.
He could call her dads' place. But sometimes yelling at someone is just not the same if you don't do it face to face.
He doesn't bother packing. Just grabs a back-pack and buys a bus ticket.
-------
"Noah."
He rolls his eyes. "Rachel."
She blinks at him through the entrance way. Her plan was to go to New York and lay her heart out on the line and win her fella. It's already going wrong. This is not part of her plan.
He tries to move around her, to come into the house. She puts her hand to his chest and tries to push him out. He barely budges. "Let me in, Rach."
The panic begins to set in. So she reverts back to old tactics. "You can't come in, my dads aren't home!"
She supposes the wicked gleam in his eye should frighten her. But it does something else entirely.
-------
"You can't come in, my dads aren't home!"
This is the second time she has ever used this line on him.
Within 20 minutes of the first, they had gotten to third base. And then broke up the next day.
As he puts his hands on her waist and hoists her up over his shoulder, he wonders if this means tomorrow she'll just cut his heart out for good.
"What are you doing?" she asks him, but there is no struggle.
"Shhhh," he admonishes, smacking her on the butt. He surprises them both when he remembers the way to her room.
Much like the last time, it's kind of perfect.
-------
He wakes up to an empty bed. There is a note on Rachel's pillow.
"I'll be waiting for you at home. R."
His mind races with what awaits him in New York.
A goodbye. A hello.
A talk he doesn't know if he is ready to have.
A talk they started four years ago on bleachers that they've been too stupid to finish.
There is a bounce to his step as he bounds down the stairs, thinking of last night.
Although that's shot to hell when he find her fathers having breakfast in the kitchen and what the fuck is he doing coming out of their daughter's bedroom this morning, exactly?
--------
She frets.
What if he doesn't come back? What if he comes back only to say he's leaving? What if he stays?
The time for planning and plotting has come and gone. There's nothing else to do, really, other than wait.
She folds laundry. She has a glass of wine. She trails her fingers over his messy stacks of CDs. She runs her hands over the worn spot on the couch where he watches the game. She lies down on his bed and revels in his scent.
She is not good at waiting.
His bedsheets are the first to go. Then out goes his guitar. And his messy piles of clothes. She leaves an old picture of Glee club that he as taped to his mirror for last. When she takes that down and adds it to the pile, she finally lets herself fall asleep.
--------
He gets in during the middle of the night.
He has two things in mind.
First, he is going to punish her for leaving him in the most awkward morning after of his life. (Her fathers took him fucking antiquing before they gave him a lift to the bus station.)
And then, he is going to have her. Just have her on every surface, every chair, table, floor, wall, of their apartment because it's been his and hers but now it's time they make it theirs.
He walks blindly in the dark to his room to dump his bag there before finding her. But when he tosses his shit, it hits the ground with a thump. He could have sworn there had been a bed in there when he left.
When he flicks the light switch, he sees it has been left completely left bare. Nothing remains.
Fuck, Berry. Fuck.
-------
She hears him stumble in the dark.
She creeps across the flat to find him standing in his (old) room, just... doing nothing. Standing. Staring at bare walls.
She makes a little noise with her throat and he looks up with an anger in his eyes that she hasn't seen in years.
"Are you coming to bed?" she asks softly. He looks like he is about to say something, something cutting and awful. But his eyes catch something, looking out over her right shoulder.
The door to her bedroom is open. The light is lit. The mess in there is easily visible.
Clothes piled up haphazardly on the floor. CDs stacked onto books stacked onto CDs. A guitar case leaning against a full-length mirror. Sports memorabilia thrown across make-up and jewellery.
His gaze softens but there is something in him that is still guarded. He doesn't move from where he stands. Like that time almost a year ago, she knows she has to be the one to ask.
"Come to bed, Noah," she says, holding out her hand.
-------
They almost make it to her their room.
But then he remembers those two things he had been meaning to do.
They're up until dawn.
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